I'm not exactly sure what Blizzard promised, but I doubt it was to stop all hackers 100% of the time. If I had to guess, their always-on connection will keep well over 99% of the player base from hacking. Not perfect, but everyone here knows it's impossible to stop everything. They may have promised to work diligently at stopping hackers, and that's all they can do.

Serious question here: What examples are there of a major gaming company such as Blizzard having the task of regulating a sanctioned non-MMO-game economy that uses real money? If you have one, how did they do it? Did they manage it well without an always-on connection? Or, seriously, could this be unprecedented?

Also, given the expectation of a fair game experience, it's not too hard to imagine Blizzard devoting a lot of resources towards combating cheating. I'd argue that they're one of the few gaming companies that are in the position to do so.

Finally, to those who insist that the always-on connection is DRM, you may be right. But, that's very different from saying it's ONLY DRM, which it clearly is not. Blizzard's persistent connection provides benefits to legitimate users, which is much better than arbitrary always-on requirements we see in other games. Shouldn't that count for something? You may argue that it doesn't benefit you personally, but like one of my favorite lines goes: Life does not stop and start at your convenience, you miserable piece of shit. (Not trying to be antagonistic, just quoting accurately!)

If Valve includes mouse input for CSGO (which I would hope they consider given it's a competition based title), I could easily see gamers stealing their home PC mice to compete at a higher level. I don't think a keyboard would even be necessary, if they can allow for the simultaneous use of controller+mouse.

Cross-platform play may not be necessary to drive these kinds of changes, but it will certainly help.